The Journal of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children

The World Council for Gifted and Talented Children
Most of the studies in the area of gifted education in Greece have mainly focused on
teachers, while research of gifted students is very rare, reflecting the state of gifted education in
Greece. Greek teachers consider themselves untrained to provide education for the gifted, while inservice-training
in the area of giftedness does not exist (Pigiaki, 1995; Starida, 1995). Also, in
accordance with the international literature, it has been shown that student and in service Greek
teachers perceive giftedness mainly with regards to academic learning characteristics and to a
lesser extent to their creativity, although student teachers tend to perceive giftedness in a more
comprehensive way. They also think that gifted students are highly motivated (Theodoridou &
Davazoglou, 2006; Theodoridou, Kokkinos, & Davazoglou, 2002). Motivation among Greek gifted
students has been examined by only one study (Gari, Kalantzi-Azizi, & Mylonas, 2000). They showed
that the group of gifted, nominated by their teachers students were interested in school courses and
school routine in general, but were simultaneously deprived of feeling challenged by the potential of
future professional success. Moreover, they were not satisfied with their efforts to strive for good
grades at school or with their social relationships at school.
Trying to bridge the gap in the research concerned with giftedness in Greece, this study
aimed at examining Greek secondary gifted students’ motivation within the broader theoretical
framework of giftedness and motivation presented above. In particular it attempted to study the
sources of interest of Greek students in their particular fields of talent, their self-efficacy, intrinsic
motivation, learning goals and task involvement as well as the existing degrees of extrinsic
motivation, performance goals and ego involvement.
Method
In a country where in general very little has been done in the area of giftedness, both in
educational provisions and in research, first of all a deeper understanding of the concept of
giftedness as experienced by gifted students is primarily needed. Qualitative research is interested in
“how people make sense of the world and how they experience events. It aims to understand ‘what
it is like’ to experience particular conditions” (Willig, 2008, p. 8). Qualitative research was therefore
thought to be more appropriate to serve the aims of the present study. Interviews were chosen as
the particular method for investigation because “at the root of in-depth interviewing is an interest in
understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience”
(Seidman, 2006 , p. 9). Similarly, (Kvale, 1996) mentions that “the purpose of interview is to obtain
descriptions of the lived world of the interviewees with respect of the described phenomena (Kvale,
1996, p. 30).
Sample
The sample consisted of 10 talented students (high school and university) who had won
national or international competitions in certain talent fields. The term talent is used as defined by
Gagné (2009a): “Talent designates the outstanding mastery of systematically developed
competencies (knowledge and skills) in at least one field of human activity to a degree that places an
individual at least among the top 10% of “learning peers”, which is differentiated to giftedness,
defined as “the possession and use of untrained and spontaneously expressed outstanding natural
abilities or aptitudes (called gifts), in at least one ability domain, 2 to a degree that places an
individual at least among the top 10% of age peers” (p. 158). Distinctions in national and
international competitions was thought to be an adequate criterion for talent identification since it
represents individuals who undoubtedly are placed among the top 10% of their peers. It is not based
solely on school grades, which may be biased, especially in Greece where grading is determined
solely by school teachers, or on intelligence testing, which is not being used extensively in Greece,
and additionally, its sole use as a criterion for giftedness has been criticized. Competition winners
are in line with the pentagonal theory of giftedness, (Sternberg & Zhang, 1995) because they meet
the excellence, the productivity, the rarity, the demonstrability and the value criteria as described
earlier. Also, competition winners have been used in many studies of the gifted (e.g., Campbell &
Feng, 2010; Feng, Campbell, & Verna, 2001; Tirri & Nokelainen, 2010).
Table 1 shows participants’ fields of talent, their gender and the most important prize they
had won up to the time of the interview. The prizes listed in the table are only representative of their
high ability; they are not the only prizes they have won. More precisely, three participants had won
competitions in astronomy, three in mathematics, two in music, and two in sports. Their ages ranged
134 Gifted and Talented International – 26(1), August, 2011; and 26(2), December, 2011.